my journey from gluttonous to glorious

They are so flipping easy and customizable to each person’s tastes and they are just downright yummy.

But tacos, in the original sense, are categorically UNvegetarian and UNvegan. So, like I love to do… I made my own version of them vegetarian style. Of course, to make them vegan, you’d just leave out the sour cream and maybe glop on some guacamole instead.

Plus, if you have carnivores in your life then you can make regular taco meat in a separate skillet and appease everyone! They just might even try the vegetarian option and realize that maybe being a vegetarian isn’t all that bad after all! (Cause honestly, I now prefer veggie tacos to meat tacos.) Serve these with a small bowl of my favorite Black Bean Soup recipe and you’ll DEFINITELY win them over!

Veggie Tacos

Ingredients

Avocados (I’d suggest 1/2 an avocado per person)

Chopped or shredded lettuce

Button mushrooms, sliced (any mushroom will work)

Bell Pepper, sliced

Onion, sliced

Cherry Tomatoes (or regular chopped tomatoes)

Taco Seasoning

Cilantro (optional… but gosh, why WOULDN’T you use it!?!?! Hehe!)

Sour Cream (optional)

Shredded Cheese (optional)

Instructions

In a skillet, saute the mushrooms and onions on medium-high in olive or coconut oil for a few minutes and then sprinkle with taco seasoning (to taste) and saute for a few more minutes.

Toss in bell peppers and saute until firm-tender.

Arrange in tortillas (A little trick, if you put sour cream or guacamole in the bottom of the tortilla it will help to keep the other juices from “dissolving” your tortilla) and spoon in sour cream/guacamole, mushroom mixture, lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, cheese, and top with avocado slices!

Typically, I eat vegetarian, but I use stuff like butter, sour cream, and shredded cheese on my baked potatoes…. cause, ya know… that’s how I’ve always done it. Well, since I’m on a four-day Daniel Fast right now, I couldn’t. So I was planning on making a Mexican baked potato… and that’s what I did, but I made it extra good!

I used the leftovers from my Black Bean Soup from last night, threw some frozen corn in while I reheated it, poured it on the baked potato along with some southwestern style salsa and a sprinkling of salsa… and heck to the yeah, it was GOOD! No butter. No sour cream. No cheese.

Before we get started here with this crazy easy recipe, I do need to point out that I’m sorta finicky about my baked potatoes. No microwave for me… and not because of the health reasons but because they are so. much. better. when they are really baked in the oven (or crock pot). So, that’s why I’m giving some slightly specific instructions for how to bake a baked potato!

Lay out a sheet of aluminum foil, place the potato in the middle and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt.

Wrap up and bake at 375° for 60-90 minutes. (Crock pot instructions at the bottom)

Once baked to where you can simply “smush” down on the foil wrapped potato and it “caves” in, then it’s ready to embellish!

Take the baked potato out of the foil and cut it up to your liking. I eat the skins and they are SO YUMMY when you prepare them with the salt and oil like we did above. (Shout out to my mom for teaching me that little trick!)

Pour the corn into the the leftover black bean soup and heat for two to three minutes on high. Pour the mixture over the baked potato.

Add the salsa and mix around with the beans.

Top with cilantro, if desired (and, honestly, you should so desire to top with it… makes the dish so much better!)

And eat your worry-free meal… no butter. no sour cream. no cheese. But SO DELICIOUS!

Baked Potatoes in the Crock Pot

I like to bake my potatoes in the crock pot a lot in the spring and summer when I don’t want to heat up the house the with oven but still want an oven-baked taste. It’s also nice to not have to worry about babysitting the oven… this way I can leave and pick up my kids or run to the store while my baked potato is a cookin away at home!

Wash and poke the potato.

Place it in the bottom of the crock pot and pour in 1/4 cup of water or vegetable broth.

I have never had the original Pioneer Woman Enchiladas, but DANNNNNNNNG this vegetarian version I made was uh.maz.ing. I won’t say that they were “easy” (which is one of my favorite qualifiers for a good recipe), but they weren’t super difficult either. I think if I made them a few more times and they were a bit more second hand then I could probably refer to them as “easy”.

But my husband, literally, complimented me on them after every. single. bite.

Sooooo, that means that they are a keeper!

Vegetarian Pioneer Woman Enchiladas

2 Tablespoons, divided and 1/2 cup Canola or Vegetable Oil, divided

1 Tablespoon All-purpose Flour

1 can (28 Ounce) Enchilada Or Red Sauce

2 cups Vegetable Broth

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1/2 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper

2 Tablespoons and 1/2 cup Chopped Cilantro

2 cans black beans, rinsed

1/2 cup chopped onions (I used frozen)

2 cans (4 Ounce) Diced Green Chilies

14 whole Corn Tortillas

3 cups Grated Colby Jack Cheese (or similar)

1 cup Chopped Green Onions

1 cup frozen corn

Instructions(I’m gonna break my instructions up similarly to PW’s method cause it really does make it easier.)

The Sauce

Over medium heat, add 1 Tablespoon of oil and flour and whisk together, cooking for one minute.

Pour in the enchilada sauce, vegetable broth, 2 Tablespoons of cilantro, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer while you prep the beans and tortillas. (She suggested simmering for 30-45 minutes… I simmered mine for about twenty probably and it was still fine.)

The Bean Filling

Heat 1 Tablespoon of oil over medium heat, then saute the onions and add the black beans and green chiles for about five minutes, stirring occasionally.

The Tortillas

Preheat your oven to 350°.

While doing that (if you are up for a little multitasking), heat 1/2 cup of vegetable oil in a small skillet over medium heat.

Set up a paper-towel-lined plate to the side.

Using tongs, dip one corn tortilla at a time into the oil and allow to fry until soft. I flipped mine about twenty seconds each side. Then arrange on the paper towels.

The Assembly

Pour 1/2 cup of enchilada sauce in the bottom of a baking pan and spread it around the bottom.

Dip each tortilla into the enchilada sauce in the pan (see her link above for great pictures of this process) and lay flat.

Spoon in a bit of bean mixture, a pinch of cheese, green onions, and corn in the center of each tortilla.

Roll up and put it in the baking pan with the seam down until you have filled your pan or used up all your tortillas.

Pour some of the remaining enchilada sauce over the enchiladas and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese.

Bake for 20 minutes (or until bubbly) and then sprinkle with cilantro and serve with sour cream.

Feed to yourself and someone else… invite someone over cause these suckers are goooooooooood. (Even though they look anything but good in this pic… I’m not a food photographer, so think of this more along the lines of “reality food tv”.)

Oh yeah, and the… Super Bonus Leftovers Recipe! Well, I actually made this whole recipe in half because I didn’t realize until I started making it that I had not paid attention and I got a medium sized jar of enchilada sauce… and what are enchiladas if they are lacking in sauce. So, I ended up having some of the bean mixture and sauce left over. And so I threw it together with some rice and it was a great thing to make for the hubs for lunch today! But honestly, I think I’ll make it again when we are craving the flavors of this enchiladas dish but I’m not in the mood to hassle with the tortillas.

Vegetarian Pioneer Woman Enchiladas SUPER BONUS LEFTOVERS RECIPE

1 cup (or however much you have) bean mixture from enchilada recipe

1/4 cup enchilada sauce mixture from enchilada recipe

1 cup of dry rice

Vegetable broth

Cook the rice using vegetable broth (if you want, or you can just use water).

Heat beans and enchilada sauce.

When rice is ready, stir in beans and enchilada sauce.

Devour.

And yeah… you can’t make rice and beans look “pretty” in a pic, like, ever. But… here they are. Yummy!

Gotta love those recipes that are born from “What am I going to cook for dinner tonight” and “Dang, I need to use up some of that 5 lb bag of potatoes” and “What do I have in the freezer???” And once again, this is a hubby-love recipe… as in hubby loved it. He ate a bit after us but he came and found me in the bathroom while I was bathing our boys and said “Oh my goodness. THIS is really good.”

And then he told me again after his second bowl.

And again after his third.

Yep. Score.

Mexican Potato Casserole

Ingredients

5 or 6 medium sized yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1/2″ pieces

1 cup frozen corn

1 can ROTEL

1 can Cream of Chicken (or Cream of Potato or Celery if you are vegetarian)

1 can of pinto beans, drained

1 1/2 cup colby jack shredded cheese, divided

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp garlic salt

5-6 dashes Frank’s Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce (or similar)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°.

Steam the potatoes on the stovetop until “al dente”. (Can I use that term for potatoes?)

Meanwhile, stir the cumin, garlic salt, and pepper sauce in with the beans and mix to combine.

A while back on Day 148, I mentioned that I was going to a wedding and well, I went!

Not that it’s particularly related to this post, but it was so not as much of a big deal (in regards to my weight) as I thought it would be… there were some good friends there, some people that I knew but never got a chance to talk to, and a few people that I might have purposefully avoided… what can I say? I’m still harboring a bit of a low-self-confidence-teenage-girl deep in my soul. But, it was entirely irrelevant whether I was wearing a size 16 or a size 8 (although, for the record, I was wearing none of those things… I was wearing a medium! ha!) and all that really mattered was getting to catch up with a good, good friend that I haven’t seen since graduation. And her life story was far more captivating than my dress size!

Okay, but back to the topic at hand… which does have to do with the wedding though (more precisely, the reception), so stick with me.

The wedding wasn’t until 3:00 and my husband, knowing that it would be just me wanting to talk to old high school friends, opted out of going, so he was going to stay home with the boys. Well, I was ready to go by 1:30 and I decided to duck out before the boys woke up so we wouldn’t have to go through the whole rigamarole of me leaving and their tears and waving to me and watching me drive away.

And after I finished my one need-to-do errand, I realized that I had forgotten to eat lunch and… I still had an hour until the wedding. Afraid that they might not have something that I could eat at the wedding and being at the point where I was getting hunnnnnngary, I started heading toward Petra (this aweeeeeeeesome fresh Mexican food bistro in McKinney).

I got their fish tacos (yum.may.) with charro beans and tortilla soup… it was all uhmazing (there’s a pic of it at the top)! And I sat out on the patio all by myself (cause everyone else likes this stuff called air conditioning… weird, I know) and faced out toward the green belt behind the restaurant and listened to the music that mimics that I would hear on the beaches of Mexico.

I ate just enough until I was full… okay, maybe a smidge past full but not feeling gross or anything, and then I went on to the wedding. The wedding was beau.ti.ful. and so special and I was just so… happy the whole time. It made me both relive the awesomeness of my own wedding and also made me want to renew my vows just so that I can have another wedding cause really, although they are a lot of work, they are also a lot of fun… and there’s the whole white dress thing. Loved her wedding dress.

Okay, okay… the point.

Well, at the reception, there was a whole lot more than just cake and punch… they had a brilliant spread! Sandwiches, fruit, cheese, crackers, etc. etc. etc. And my friends all got up from their table to go get some grub. I wasn’t hungry, but I also really wanted to hang out with them… so I went through the line with them… and didn’t get a thing.

And I didn’t spontaneously combust because I didn’t get food.

And no one pointed and laughed at me.

And I sat back down with my friends while they snacked.

And it was all good.

And I was reminded once again of

a) how much food is intertwined with our lives… to a lot of people wedding = reception = good food and cake
b) how I don’t have to eat when I’m not hungry
c) how far God has brought me
d) how far God still can bring me!

So, although I’m so extremely pleased that my dear friend said “I Do”… I’m just as pleased that I said “I Don’t… want anything to eat.”

My husband is doing a test-run of the covenant during June, and since he’s a teacher then he’s on summer so I get to make childless treks to the grocery store. Which means, we’ll be eating well for the next couple of months! Plus, I got a cookbook from my mom for Mother’s day… The Vegetarian Bible!

3. Place 1 tortilla on a baking sheet (or two soft taco sized tortillas side by side… to make two “towers”). Spread with 3/4 cup pinto bean mixture over the tortilla to within 1/2 inch of the edge. Top with 1/4 cup of cheese. Top with 1 tortilla and 3/4 cup black bean mixture. Top with 3/4 cup of cheese. Repeat layers twice more. Top with the remaining tortilla and spread with the remaining pinto bean mixture. Cover with aluminum foil.

4. Bake at 400° for 35 minutes or until the filling is hot. Take pie out and uncover.

5. Turn off the oven.

6. Top with the remaining cheese and put pie back in for 3 minutes or until cheese is melted.

7. Cut the pie into wedges. Serve with additional picante sauce and sprinkle with additional cilantro, if desired.

* Could add in shredded chicken or taco meat into either the black bean or the pinto mixture.

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Meet Me

Hey there, friend, my name is January! Almost two years ago, realizing I was addicted to food (mainly sugar) I made a covenant with God to only eat certain foods and I'm blogging my way through it!

I'd love for you to join me on this journey as we seek God to help us through addiction to food, gluttony, overeating... whatever you want to call it. I truly believe that through covenanting with God that we can be free of this weight that brings us down, and we can move from gluttonous to glorious!